>> we hope you'll tune in tomorrow-- what was that? >> that's just growling, four hours, a happy growl. >> brenda: a stomach growling? >> no, it's my mouth. >> clayton: gut roll. >> brenda: and we have a lottery winner tomorrow who's going to come on and touch us all how to win the lottery. >> good. >> brenda: and i may not be here tomorrow. >> rick: tune in tomorrow. >> clayton: don't add into the pool. we're going to get tucker some food and log on to foxnews.com for the after the show show

and sunday. >> tucker: we will see you tomorrow. >> brenda: sequestration is, but if you think that means the tax hike threat is over, think again. that's the point. >> brenda: sure, but it speaks volumes. revenues mean taxes and we're already seeing how that payroll tax hike is kicking your assets. consumers cutting back on major purchases and hikes cut into paychecks. are more hikes the last thing the economy needs right now. hi, everyone, i'm brenda buttner, this is bulls and bears. let's get right to it. the bulls and bears this week, gary b smith, tobin smith, jonas max ferris and welcome to everybody. scott, they're still pushing more taxes, but did we just get evidence that's the wrong way to go? >> i think we did, brenda. look, taxes are tough at anyti time like this, where gdp growth just got revised to oh, my goodness, 0.1% on the flat

side for q-4. unemployment still ridiculously high. there's no way through it. we just hit the rich and the spenders and the job creators in this country, and it's showing. consumer confidence is falling. purchases of big ticket items are falling, brenda. >> it's not going to work, we're already feeling it. >> brenda: julian, do you agree, tax hikes? good or bad for the economy? >> i think the place we may all agree when you have a weak economy like we have. you don't want to see us going after the deficit the way we are, whether it's the tax increases on anybody or big spending. most of the economists that have looked at this, including the cbo and says that the factors of this obama administration talking about closing loopholes, interest, zero to maybe 1/10 of 1% on gdp, and we are going to cut the debt. i think we do it in the long-term, not the short-term, but look, here is the central problem that you can't ignore. spending right now is about 23% of gdp. federal spending.

taxes are at historic lows for about 16% of gdp. domestic discretionary spending is lower than it's been since 1962. so, you cannot cut your way-- spending cut your way out of this problem. if you want to attack the debt and deficit you have to have a combination of the two otherwise the math doesn't add up. >> brenda: gary b, let's do the math what the ending of the payroll tax holiday has done so far. is that evidence perhaps that we can't hike taxes more? >> well, i think you just saw it, brenda, with what's happening at wal-mart. they clearly stated that you know, that's their constituency, people that take home a paycheck, you know, every week or two weeks, saw that the payroll tax get hiked and what happened? wal-mart got slammed. they now, you know, i'm sure there were other factors, but look, it's hitting that broad swath of quote, unquote, middle america that obama champions and rightly so, right where it hurts. so, any kind of tax hike at this point is going to, going to be devastating. look, you know, julian likes

to say no less than christina roamer who headed up obama's council of economic advisors, stood the impact of tax hikes and she said that for every dollar extra the government takes in in tax hikes, gdp declines by $3. look, it gets back to the basic point we've made on the show many times. is there anyone out there that thinks that the government can spend our money more efficiently or effectively than we can? i think the answer is no. so, can we cut? absolutely. should we cut is the bigger question, and we should, asap. >> brenda: okay, jonas, the deficit, huge. we can cut spending if we have tax hikes though, does that help or hurt the economy? >> anytime you raise taxes you're dragging the economy. luckily, this year, the relatively small taxes that most people saw could be handled by this level of economy. if the economy was in worse shape, winde'd probably be

another in another recession. and we're not going to balance this budget with the current tax scheme, it's going to go higher across the board down the road, but it doesn't need to kick in this year or next year, we're not on a crisis anymore, we made some progress and bigger long-term problems, but we're not going to be able to cut discretionary spending and balance a budget. some point revenue, for the nondiscretionary to cut significantly. again, it's a ten, 15-year problem. c can can be solved now. >> brenda: long-term, short-term tax hikes, what do they do? >> we know not only from that how they pick money up. from common sense if you take money out of the hands of capitalist, you have capital owners and you you have people who apply that capital. when you have less, air going to have less economic activity. we know that. i do agree with our new found

colleague julian, that the absolute long-term issues, you know, make everything else pale in comparison, but in the short-term here, the word we should have is about growth. the words that we need to hear are about the things that we're doing grow our economy and senator entrepreneurial businesses and have people get the animal spirits again and hearing words whatever code word for raising taxes does not get the animal spirits going. >> brenda: and julian, go ahead. >> there are basic facts that i think we have to try to agree on. one is you go of after the debt the way that jonas said long-term not short-term and few economists that think we ought to be attacking it now. to the extent you put taxes in there, you put taxes in in a way that they hurt the economy least. cbo, crs, a host of economists said the kind of stuff that obama is talking about is the place least hurtful. the third thing, how do you make spending that match revenue. even, conservative republicans

in congress are only talking about bringing spending down to about 20 or 19% of gdp, but if you've got tax revenues that are at 16% of gdp the math doesn't work. even if you take the most conservative position on this, you're still looking at a debt unless you get taxes into the mix. >> or growth, or growth. >> i agree with toby on growth. absolutely we ought to be focusing on growth and jobs. the fourth thing if you want to go after the debt long-term you've got to go where the money is the way that mr. sutton once said, the joking reference to the bank robber. we spend 8,000 per american on health care and until we go after health care costs and particularly entitlement in an intelligent and bipartisan way we wouldn't solve the debt problem, a whole other source of a side here. >> brenda: scott, julian has brought up the fact that the white house is now talking about loopholes. we started out with tax hikes and then we moved to revenue, then we moved to expenditure.

and is it tax hikes. >> it's like a tax credit or return. it's a joke, it boggles. there are the sacred cows or in the day sacred horses which are medicaid, medicare and social security and they're not touching them, brenda. that's the biggest issue, i hate the talk about long-term, guys. that word is thrown out there more than anything and i mean, we never get to it. that's the problem. we've barely got to the sequestration date and they're already trying to fix it up with other tax hikes. so the long-term issue or saying it's going to be fixed in the long-term i think is a defeatist attitude here. >> what are you talking about? the president just said today that medicare is on the table. >> brenda: okay. >> the president said medicare is on the table, what are you talking about. >> it's on the table, done, yeah, it's on the table, that's great. >> brenda: toby, go ahead. >> toby. >> remember, whatever we called it, any of the loopholes, i mean, for crying out loud, and you know, tax or private jet tax or whatever, you know, literally, we spent 3 billion dollars a day, we borrow 3 billion dollars a day and spend 3 billion and borrow

1 1/2 billion a day. all the loopholes, put them altogether, it's wiped them all out other than mortgage interest and you're talking about 60, 70 billion dollars, and that's a drip in the pot, doesn't come close. >> brenda: and gary b, i wanted to ask you, we talk long-term opposed to short-term, you can't get to the long-term unless you do something in the short-term, is that correct? >> exactly, julian makes a persuasive argument that we have to balance these, you know, the revenues and the expenditures. here is the problem, is the underlying assumption that the government is this efficient maserati out there that is burning that, you know, to 10 miles per hour or 10 miles per gallon gasoline out there, the most efficiently it could. we all know, the government accountability office identified at least 100 billion dollars of cuts right off just with overlapping programs out there that could be cut tomorrow and yet, we still need more revenues to feed in inefficient engine.

that's why i'm against any kind of tax increase because it's going to this dinosaur out there. >> brenda: okay. guys, i'm sorry, guys, we're got to pay our bills. coming up, forget those big numbers on wall street. neil's gang says pay attention to the number of layoffs happening on main street. are those the numbers telling us what is really happening? that's at the bottom of the hour. but up here first, remember this? >> if you like your doctor, you'll be able to keep your doctor, period. >> brenda: well, maybe not. the doctor shortage now hitting another state, the sunshine state. is a dark cloud looming over patients nationwide because of it?

>> we are from america's news headquarters, hi, everybody, i'm jamie colby. democrats and republicans trading blame one day after a series of automatic spending cuts went into effect. in his weekly address this weekend, president obama says the g.o.p., quote, close this

outcome over closing a single wasteful tax loophole. the republican response, kathy mcmorris-rogers says that democrats are the ones who failed to act. the syrian government and opposition criticizing a u.s. plan to provide food and medical supplies to rebels fighting to topple president assad. the country's foreign minister in fact warning that the decision will only prolong the two year conflict wliel tsays t what the rebels need are weapons. so far more than 70,000 killed in that upsizing. i'm jamie colby on fox. now send it back to "bulls and bears". keep it right here. >> brenda: if you're not careful, this is your future. >> there's no one else, all right? >> it's a full moon. everybody's going into labor. there are not enough doctors. there are not enough, okay?

and deliver this baby, follow me. oh! okay, i'm a little nervous, okay? it's my first delivery. >> brenda: okay. so that may be funny, but this is no joke. another doctor shortage, this time in florida. gary b, what's causing this? >> well, brenda it starts with the very first doctor you see and that's the primary care specialist. you don't need to look further than massachusetts which of course was the model, at least in some camps they say, of obamacare, they face a shortage, brenda, not only in primary care specialty, but in eight specialties across the board. it's estimated by health care that by 2014, 7 million americans will have trouble finding a primary care physician. the reason, primary care, which is kind of the tip of the iceberg here, they're the

ones that have the most paper work, which you know is going to go up under obamacare and they get paid the least. brenda, i'm going to steal a line from neil, the best way to benefit from obamacare is to buy stock in the company that makes waiting room chairs because that's what you're going to need after this all kicks in. >> brenda: so, scott, not just a problem in florida, you think this might be nationwide? >> yeah, it's nationwide, brenda. and florida just happens to be an example here for a couple reasons. one, it's a terrible tort reform state. just very tough. and don't forget, too, there's a lot of medicare parents, when you're in private practice and looking for medicare not great spot especially down the road, the hospitals are buying up the private practices and overpowering some small care places because they're got more negotiating power with the insurers, it's a tough place to be especially in florida. >> brenda: julian, you're worried about this? >> yes, i'm worried about it. and we hear about the health care lotto unconstitutional

and republican governors saying they'd never take medicaid expansion and now they're flocking to medicaid expansion. the medicaid expansion which is the issue here, will cover 21 million people who weren't insured. and the of those uninsured, doctors are in better off treating insured than uninsured. many had to treat them under law when they weren't insured. the obama law, reduced 10 billion over 10 years, provides bonuses to doctors to provide the medicaid patients. so what i think, this is the latest complaint in had a series of complaints about the health care law that turn out not to be true, from detractors from the law and then what we see is the supreme court embraces it, republican governors are embracing it and everybody is embracing it. >> it's still going to bend the health curve, that health care costs are going to go down? i thought that's been debunked. >> no, the other issue with about premiums going up. >> brenda: i'm sorry, we've

got to move this conversation. we've got to move this information. we don't have time right now. toby, doctor shortages, that what we're talking about, is obamacare causing them. >> we've had doctor shortages for the last five years and again, use massachusetts. massachusetts has the second most physicians per population in the united states. now, if anybody was not going to have shortages, they would be it, right? well, they went from a 21 day waiting period for a doctor, pre-massachusetts care to somewhere in 42 to 45 days for a primary care physician. that was just massive because they put more people in the system than physicians. the second issue is that medicaid and medicare are not forced on doctors, they don't have to take it and they lost 20% of their doctors. >> brenda: sorry to cut you off. jonas. >> and i'm pretty sure there's not a shortage of plastic surgeons in florida. the reason is there's no

insurance companies and premiums, how much. we've increased the demand for health care and want to get health insurance. you can't increase the supply of doctors if they can't make more money as demand for services go up. that's the way costs go up, shortage of lines for everybody, the faips. >> brenda: okay, you guys, did the president's own state department put pressure on him to approve the keystone pipeline. backers are jumping for joy and environmentalists are jumping ugly. now, with gas prices soaring, is it time for the white house to get jumping on a decision? mine was earned in djibouti, africa, 2004. the battle of bataan, 1942. [ all ] fort benning, georgia, in 1999. [ male announcer ] usaa auto insurance is often handed down from generation to generation

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>> the could he >> some keystone pipeline protesters might want to listen to this, the state department saying in a freshly released rye view and the white house needs to decide. if the president passes this, what will happen? >> first off, people are fed up with gas prices and in fact, the midwest has sort of been benefitting from this disparity of oil availability. this study just proved i think what many of us have been saying from outside experts, that in fact, not only did 1/10 of 1% of temperature ririse rise, whatever that means. the goss pri the gas prices in the time when we need a boost.

>> the oil fans are dirtier in contributing climate change and-- >> and now the state department is not saying that. >> let me finish the point. a threat to drinking water and said it wouldn't do much in terms of oil prices because this oil will make it into the u.s. markets anyway, the state department knocked down one of those three big pillars today. they said they do not believe there will be a big environment impact. it seems to me the critics of the obama administration can't have it both ways, they can't say this is an anti-energy, this is an anti-energy administration when you have a department coming out with this report. the critics of the obama administration can't have it both ways, seem to be pro energy to me. >> brenda: gary b, which way do you have it? >> look, if obama signs it off i'll give him props for being pro energy, but this isn't just about the keystone pipeline. i think this is the tip of the iceberg, yes. if the administration really is pro energy, then they're going to do stuff like open up anwar and allow more off shore

drilling and give back some of the permits they took away. that's what i'm looking for. there's estimates all over the place, how many jobs this is going to create. julian's probably right. oil prices probably uneffected for the short-term. long-term all positive. >> brenda: jonas, is it all positive? >> look, this is dirty fuel, tar sands, no question about t the only part we can control are the pipeline in america, and some ways it's an improvement over the alternative which is shipping it to china. it's not great, but better than anything else and we probably should go for it. >> brenda: scott, what do you think this is going to do for gas prices. >> brenda, i want our hands on that oil. for every sent of increase at the pump. 500 or so billion out of the market and economies, i like this here and a reason we can actually try to start getting some of the oil and it's going to create jobs, guys, jobs and tax revenue. i think that's a good thing. >> brenda: thanks everybody and especially to julian, appreciate it. >> thank you, brenda. >> brenda: so these guys just

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